Here's a phase one and two progression of a sketch that's on my desk right now. PHASE one: blue line rough sketch to try and find the pose. I always run out of paper at the bottom because I didn't start high enough and/or drew it too big. Always. PHASE two: I'v reworked a few things further in blue (Like straightening her arm and taking out the angle break at her wrist so the gun feels heavier) and now I'm starting to refine/ finalize things in graphite. I try and leave a few things to work out in graphite so I can still have some happy accidents and I hate tracing. Being an animator all those years, you'd think I wouldn't mind drawing the same drawing over and over again. I still don't.

Wow, I love it when amazing artist like yourself show us how you do what you do. I love seeing your work. And thanks for listing your pencil types. I just recently started using blue pencils to sketch my work but am not happy with the quality of mine. So, thank you for doing what you do.